by Kyle OlsonIn an effort to fulfill some bizarre
need in my life, I purchase a lot of CDs, both old and new. They
are obsessively cataloged and organized and poured over track by
track (Seriously, it's obsessive. It involves post-it notes and
code and excel spreadsheets). It is truly a labor of love (and
an unhealthy psychological imperative). But, since I am consuming
so much music, I thought I could use this constant influx for the
powers of good. Should I come across anything worth sharing (either
a new release or an old favorite), I will share them with you.
So you'll love me.

Bar Kokhba Sextet - Lucifer:
Book of Angels Volume 10 (Tzadik)
John Zorn's decades-long career in the downtown jazz scene has seen him
exploring jazz to its outer realms, dabbling in heavy metal and hardcore, composing
dozens
of film scores, creating unholy (and holy) rackets, starting record labels, opening
donation-only-funded music venues, and winning MacArthur Genius Grants. If you
pick up an album with John Zorn's name on it, you could be getting amazing renditions
of the works of Ennio Morricone, or something that sounds like (as my sister
described it) a didgeridoo and a horse. The man is capable of anything from the
bizarre to the near-unlistenable, and every so often he calms down and makes
something beautiful and accessible like his work for the Bar Kokhba Sextet.

Much of Zorn's prolific work is infused with the music of his Jewish roots. The
saxophonist's most famous band, Masada, is a jazz quartet that combines traditional
extended jazz improv with melodies and themes that draw from Sephardic musical
genelogy. After completing the first "book" of Masada songs with his
quartet, he has started on book two: the "Book of Angels." Rather than
record another decalogue of Masada albums, Zorn has chosen to farm these new
compositions out to a variety of musical acts. One of the groups, the Bar Kokhba
Sextet, is a group of musicians that perform "Sephardic exotica for young
moderns." The musicians involved have performed with everyone from Alan
Ginsberg to Tom Waits and the Mountain Goats. Guys like Marc Ribot and Cyro Baptista
are all session-musician big guns with the skills to perform any style, and the
chops to outplay anyone, which makes the subtle refinement of Lucifer so much
more intriguing.

Volume ten in the Book of Angels is an intoxicating mix of jazz, lounge, surf,
and world, and mixes them all in with a massive dash of Jewish mysticism. The
pieces are sensual, occasionally sounding like the soundtrack to occulted bellydance
opium lounges: strings slithering around each other, enticing the listener with
their promises of exotic physical delights. In other passages, the music seems
far more traditional, like a klezmer party in the Old World, at least until it
blends into Ribot's surf guitar improvs (surf's up at Beth Shalom Beach!). The
rhythm section of Joey Baron and Greg Cohen lock the whole enterprise down with
entrancing polyrhythms, punctuated by Baptista's latin percussion.

A band that mixes latin, surf, klezmer, and jazz influences sounds
like the recipe for one of those horrible bands you are forced to endure while
waiting in line at the movie theaters by South Coast Plaza. The differences are,
of course, Zorn's magnificent compositions as the music's melodic base and the
sextet's honed-to-perfection improv skills. Any member of this group could blow
the doors off of your face's ass with their ability, but the complete vibe of
the project would be destroyed. The high point of the entire "Book of Angels" collection,
Lucifer offers up an intoxicating and unique musical blend. And while this album
has been described as "easy listening" (which is technically accurate),
please don't fall prey to that genre's pejorative connotations. This plays more
like a dynamic Hebrew rendtion of cool bop combos of years gone by than elevator
music. Of course, in comparison to much of Zorn's catalog, nearly anything could
be described as easy listening. He is currently the only artist in my library
that has an album with an honest-to-Yahweh warning label on it, as certain pieces "may
cause nausea....and permanent ear damage." Fear not, young moderns, this
album goes down much smoother.